First I have to say, I am not a programmer and I do not have any knowledge about Fmod.

I am here to ask about a game using Fmod to process its sound. The game called Alliance of Valiant arms (or AVA). There is USA version and Taiwan version of this game. These versions are using different Fmod Ex versions as I checked the fmodex.dll file for both versions. Fmod Ex version of USA AVA is 4.34.7 and Taiwan AVA is using an older version 4.32.8.

Now, here is a video compairing the sound quality of both versions of the game (USA and Taiwan):

Obviously, Taiwan’s version has better sound quality although it has older Fmod Ex version. Looking in the CHANGELOGS I found

[quote:htg1c6zn]01/07/10 4.33.00 pre 4 – Development internal update:

!* Windows – All mixing is now done by FMOD’s software mixer, as hardware
support is 1. prone to buggy drivers, 2. lacking features, 3. not as fast
as mixing on the CPU these days, due to inneficiencies in DirectSound.[/quote:htg1c6zn]

Now if I understand correctly, Fmod Ex version 4.32.8 (which is used by Taiwan’s version of the game) has hardware sound support, since it was only removed in version 4.33.00.
And I wondered if this is the reason for the bad sound quality (or, you can call it "loss in fidelity") we get in the USA version of the game?

Thanks for providing such a clear example of the differences between the two versions.

Unfortunately there are a lot of factors that may affect the audio quality and without direct access to someone on the technical team for that game it’s hard to know what settings they are providing FMOD with. We cannot even confirm that they are in-fact using hardware sounds or not. If you are concerned over the audio differences I would recommend you contact the developers and question them, which may lead them to us if they cannot help you.